


venture on a piece of sleep

by cridecoeur



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-22
Updated: 2006-04-02
Packaged: 2017-10-20 09:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/211393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cridecoeur/pseuds/cridecoeur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The third day is an oyster: she breaks it with her fist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

(The third day is an oyster: sharp and pearl-bright; Regulus pries a pink flesh dawn from night, lingering, tight-jawed night, mouth to mouth, breath-stealer night – the blunt crack of his palm on night, on the crease of lips, jerking him open, night; the world curls away grey; a storm gathers, lightning-thick, licks down at him – pearl pale with rain, and the grinning snake, green, and the Mark on his body, black on white.)

Regulus smiles when the cracking trees fall around him. Splinter and split, bodies like crosses, like crucifixion – down, they tumble down, and the earth heaves sounds like muffled thunder. Bella’s white thighs pin him to the ground; crush of lavender and rolling bodies – his head spins, and her fingers leave blue bruises on his throat (a traitor’s crown of thorns).

What have you done, little Reggie, she says (she sings). Wet grass slips through his fist, and her thighs slip wetly down his body. What have you done, he says, and she strikes his laughing mouth, crack of palm and red lips and his teeth slick with blood. Thunder burns a white noise through him, echoes through him, space by space; here, the bleached hum of her, and, here, the hot touch of her. Bella kisses him (breath-stealer, man-killer, night), and he tastes his brother (his blood) in her mouth, in her devouring (slack-jawed, night, mouth like night, open and black, and her skin oyster white, and her cheek, the grey curl of morning).

(He loved her, once: this is a lie. Her face, like a pearl shell mourner’s mask, caught his eye, all sharp, Black beauty. She danced in the parlor at Grimmauld Place, her white hands on Sirius’ shoulders, while Narcissa played the piano, her own white hands like flags snapped up in the wind, just flapping, flapping. She was nineteen years old, and he was nine: Narcissa played terribly, but she danced well. He tried, that night, to wind bird feathers in her hair – lapwing and magpie and augerey.)

Blue ash streaks his fingers, and she snaps them one by one by one (and she snapped the feathers, pulled them from her hair, a jerk of her white fingers and the false crown fell from her – she was not the island queen of his imaginings, though her magic was breaking bones and human teeth and the night: oh, the night, an oyster, opening and opening, and splitting him open, that night). He feels her blunt force, hands against his stomach, against his cheek, and his teeth loose in his mouth and the dawn rising and split from the night and, yes, the fading night and himself fading (and the light slipped away, a shiver over her face and her violence, and her against him). Thunder burns a white noise through her: cracking magic and the trees fall when he tries to breathe, just breathe, and she snaps his fingers, but the magic jerks from him, the cracking magic: the trees fall like crosses, like crucifixion.

The third day is an oyster: she breaks it with her fist.


	2. as a burning and a fever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He will come again, she knows. Let him see her here; let him judge her; she has been faithful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written for a_humumentathon which was a community no one outside of a tiny circle of people knew about. The challenge only ran one year and then faded into even greater obscurity.

Here: it is winter in the cracked shell of her, in the last mad green dripped from her mouth, in the slack curl of her wrist on stone, against stone, herself stone, grey on grey on grey. Grease smudge of her lips – and lips that are not lips, but hungry mouths, black and opening, opening, their hungry mouths. She sentences herself; she is guilty; she relishes the verdict. They, with animal eyes slack in their faces, blank as stone, blank as fear, listen to the white sea noise of their cells and forget her and forget their glory and his.

(He will come again, she knows. Let him see her here; let him judge her; she has been faithful.)

Syllables stick to her teeth, Cru-ci-o, Cru-ci-o, Cru-ci-o; she wraps her lips around them, holds them, forces them back and down into the heart of her where the hot and green world blooms. A-va-da. A-va-da. The dementors cannot take these words or do not understand their worth (such worth: a mollusk shell echoes the white roar of the sea); she warms herself with them.

 

The fish belly sky split and rain shivered down on the house; a round noise rolled across the roof, first touch of the storm, and green light touched the carpet and the velvet curtains. The house sunk down in the rain, drowning, the whole family, drowning, and the house a ship slipped into the sea.

Absurd – a fire burned in the grate, a log crackled and split, ash stuck to her pale hands (and to them and to their finger bruises and to their mouths, their open mouths, their hungry mouths like night). White roar of thunder and two red birds fell suddenly down the chimney, a tumble of feathers and ash and quiet (such quiet; the fire split them, but they made no sound). At least, she did not hear them scream (Crucio she whispers and they scream).

 

She wakes, and her cousin is there, Sirius with his stone eyes that do not blink (and how could she miss those eyes, those grey eyes like his brother’s eyes, those eyes like the sea: the sea, pounding against the shore, the sea beyond her window). She wakes – the queen raising her regal head, a proud tilt of her chin and slant of her eyes, though the movements are foreign, now, stiff – and regards him as he once was: her little cousin, childish with his raised fists and his flower-pot mouth, his filthy, open mouth.

(She watched them, once: curl of pale bodies and rough tumble, like the vulgar flight of bumblebees in the garden, swoop and catch and pin, reeling with the green hot scent of his bedroom, flowers and the froth of wine like sea foam, brother’s blood, Cru-ci-o. Day slipped through the room; green shadows balked at the touch of them; their white bodies were bright with heat – not bright as her white hands wrapped around his throat, but no, that’s later, Dark Mark a smudge of green in the sky. When he shuddered a last breath, she kissed him, swallowed it down, and thought of his brother yet to be broken.)

She whispers the story to him, and Sirius laughs, his mouth torn across his face; he laughs and laughs, and the dementors swarm around them, but he never stops laughing.

 

Here it is winter in the cracked shell of her, in the last mad green dripped from her mouth. She is: an inward curl of limbs, the last rose touched by frost, fist of petals tight around a green strange heart. She screams; grease smudge of her lips opening and opening, her wide black mouth, opening. Crucio he whispers, and she screams.

**Author's Note:**

> Another thing I did was kill Regulus a lot! At the time my working theory was if you loved a character, the best thing you could give them was a good death. So, uh, he died well, several times.


End file.
